Saturday, July 29, 2006

Computational Systems Biology Vs. Molecular Systems Biology

Any thoughts?









Picture taken from www.sysbio.de

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

By pure definitions, I feel, one is the study based on computer simulations and other the experiments.

Animesh
Indian Statistical Institute

Anonymous said...

Again from the same philosophy of verbal expression:-

Molecular Systems Biology

Molecular Scale: At the molecular level there are physical properties (you can
say as processes) and hence the chemical properties.I feel all chemistry is a
manifestation of physics.

Systems: An orthogonal view is component-level (molecular-level). However at the
system's level especially when you are collectively sayin 'Molecular systems',
it means integrated dynamic(behavioural) and static(structural)
analysis/analysis of segregated molecular processes(forming the system).

So in all if you coin Molecular Systems Biology.

While Computational Systems Biology (CSB)

Systems--> When you say systems (a pure unambiguous term) meaning some input
/stimuli (biologically speaking) produces some output (response). However if
the system is robust, we may not see any output/ response (biologically
speaking). In that case this input may be captured by some internal properties
of the system.

Systems Biology: If you take the systems components to be some biological
processes.

When you add the term of Computational it becomes the automated analyses
involving the databasing of experimental data, then making
models/simulations/validations by employing some computation. However this CSB
can have degenerated standpoints because bilogy has got several fine
standpoints. This computation could be simple software or could be a complex
algorithm borrowed from computersciences.

Finally I feel like CSB encapsulates MSB, because MSB is present in CSB as stored data and/or knowledge.

Disclaimer: Its my personal understanding of terminology rather axioms based on
my vocabulary inference. This is replied as a thought.

prash said...

I thank two of the posts from Animesh and Gourinath.

I feel that computational systems biology is a take from molecular systems biology as biology might have reckoned "molecules" first, then the whole system.

Owing to data deluge, we have raised computational systems biology through computational biology.

In conclusion, this impeccable subject has much to do to peg thoughts on number of orphan genes in the organisms.

Thanks
Prash